


Avocados are on half price

by Allothi



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: F/F, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-05
Updated: 2010-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-14 10:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allothi/pseuds/Allothi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. Written for a kinkmeme prompt: <i>Love at first sight</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Avocados are on half price

Avocados are on half price. Gwen searches through them all and finds a single one that isn't hard as rock or squidgily soft, and puts it in her basket. There's a woman up the aisle looking at sugar snap peas, wearing something fashion-forward forward, and Gwen accidentally meets her eye.

When you first start going out with someone, if the attraction is strong and good, there's this feeling that you can't take your eyes off them. You have this need to keep looking at their face. It's uncontrollable. Gwen shudders right through her when that's how she feels right now, magnetic attraction that tells her she needs to keep looking at this woman, be near her, be around her, hear what she has to say. Own a thousand pictures that'll never be as good as the real thing.

The woman stares right back, and Gwen only realises, and that she's crazy, after a good minute at least. It's insane but it's hard to wrench her head down and hurry on, cheeks burning with shame. Gwen's lips and fingertips feel tingly, not getting enough blood, and her heart is beating in a way that scares her.

The woman's face stays with her all week. Her mind gets dragged back to the scene so that she stops still and daydreams in the middle of cleaning, the vacuum growling for her attention, or her eyes slide off her computer screen at work and she's gone, back in aisle #2: fruit and vegetables.

Next week she decides to go to a different supermarket, so she'll know that she's not an idiot, but she still drives straight to Tesco Extra. She stays half an hour with the avocados. They're not on offer this week, and they're much better. Gwen puts three in her basket. She goes round and does the rest of her shopping, and before she pays she goes back again to avocados. The woman is there with a basket full of sugar snap peas.

"Hi," the woman says. "What's your name? What's your number?"

*

Morgana is rich and a little thoughtless and not Gwen's type. They go to a restaurant and stare at each other and can barely eat. They walk down the street in the streetlit night and bump hands and arms and hips. They get to Gwen's car and end up kissing pressed up against it, Gwen's hands pressed hard against the metal to keep them still. She doesn't know what's wrong with her. They go to Gwen's flat to watch a film and don't get past _You wouldn't steal a handbag_. The film plays in the background, and Gwen twice tries to look up, to get a hold on the plot, but the film doesn't have Morgana and Morgana's right there, _right right there, oh god_.

They see each other every day. Three days in Morgana stops going home, just goes to work from Gwen's and stays the nights, wears Gwen's clothes and her underwear and buys new bras and fuck-me shoes in her lunch breaks. Morgana cooks extravagant food, and in three days Gwen's kitchen is a mess of splashed wine and eighteen year-old balsamic, artisan breadcrumbs on every inch of counter and _fleur de sel_ crunching on the floor. Gwen thinks it's disgusting and wants to shout. Gwen can't even bring herself to clean up because it's _Morgana_ , with her, living in her flat, it's _Morgana's mess_ in Gwen's kitchen.

Morgana lives with some kind of stepfather, who lives in a mansion, who owns at least seventeen unethical businesses and mistakes Gwen for a maid when Morgana brings her to visit. Morgana takes one of his cars in recompense, something far too expensive for Gwen to run; Morgana ends up going down on Gwen in the passenger seat, pulled over on the hard shoulder of the M40.

Gwen's flat's not really big enough for two, so Morgana buys her a new one. In a better location. With a view, and a jacuzzi, and a TV wider than Gwen's old bedroom. But they still can't get through films.

Gwen hasn't read a book in months, her eyes go over the words and she thinks, _Morgana_ ; and she's starting to worry about her job. She's happier than she ever knew she could be, euphoric on bliss on love and sex and every moment her skin comes near Morgana's, electric in her fingertips, Gwen's brain a short-circuited lump of flesh. It's hormonal or its chemical, and Gwen is wired on all the ways she just doesn't care.


End file.
